But in the midst of a prolonged stillness the young man sprang up so suddenly that Nellie was still half clinging to his neck as he stood erect.

"Hush!" he whispered; "some one is near!" He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slanting tree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility of a squirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and listened.
To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age before he rejoined her.
"You are safe," he said; "he's going by the western trail toward Indian Spring." "Who is _he_ ?" she asked, biting her lips with a poorly restrained gesture of mortification and disappointment.
"Some stranger," replied Low.
"As long as he wasn't coming here, why did you give me such a fright ?" she said pettishly.

"Are you nervous because a single wayfarer happens to stray here ?" "It was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the trail," said Low.
"He was a stranger to the wood, for he lost his way every now and then.
He was seeking or expecting some one, for he stopped frequently and waited or listened.

He had not walked far, for he wore spurs that tinkled and caught in the brush; and yet he had not ridden here, for no horse's hoofs passed the road since we have been here.

He must have come from Indian Spring." "And you heard all that when you listened just now ?" asked Nellie half disdainfully.
Impervious to her incredulity, Low turned his calm eyes on her face.
"Certainly, I'll bet my life on what I say.